The failure of nationalist governments in the Third World and US drive for global hegemony have led to religious radicalism and new liberation struggles, writes Ayman El-Amir* The recent UN Security Council resolution imposing punitive sanctions against North Korea for testing a nuclear device has only encouraged Iran to double its nuclear enrichment capacity and pointed more to divisiveness than to unanimity among the world's leading military powers. Ignoring the status imposed upon them by US President George W Bush as founding-members of the Axis of Evil, North Korea and Iran seem to be leading a rising global rebellion against US dominance. As a result, other smaller states are giving some serious reconsideration to their policies of nuclear abstinence in an increasingly insecure world. The tools of sanctions and raw military power are producing more defiance than compliance in regions where super-power lop-sided practices have created serious imbalances. The principles of the peaceful settlement of disputes, of international law and of collective security that the UN Charter envisioned when adopted in 1945 are in quick retreat. Thanks to the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, the retaliatory bombing of Afghanistan before it and Washington's unbridled support of Israel's murderous campaign against the Palestinians, the Bush administration has radicalised, not subdued, nations opposed to its policies. National liberation movements seeking to attain their legitimate aspirations, as endorsed by the United Nations, are more hostile than ever towards US heavy-handed tactics. Bush administration practices have created more enemies-in-waiting than friends- at-large. Three factors have contributed to the rise of radicalism: America's rabid desire for unipolar hegemony, enhanced by the Bush administration's air of self-righteousness; the increasing fragmentation of state entities, particularly in the republics of the former Soviet Union; and the rise of terrorism as a consequence of military invasion and the suppression of democratic choices. The US was both the precursor and the victim of radicalism in the aftermath of the regrettable terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. This incident, coupled with its uncouth sense of imperial power, made it conceivable for the US to settle every dispute around the world through the excessive use of firepower. The policy was enshrined in President Bush's 2002 national security strategy that promised not only pre- emptive military strikes against perceived enemies abroad, but even went as far as announcing that, after the collapse of the former Soviet Union, the US would not allow any state to be equal, let alone surpass it, in terms of military superiority. An almighty imperial power was brought into being to the delight of born-again Evangelical radicals. After Afghanistan, which the US has now offloaded to NATO, Iraq became the first testing ground for the new imperial policy of Mr Bush and his neo-cons. Three and half years into the invasion, Iraq has become a land of untold suffering. Figures speak for themselves. A Johns Hopkins University study estimates that 655,000 Iraqis have been killed since the invasion, representing 2.5 per cent of the total population of Iraq. Although controversial, the figure is not so far-fetched if the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior's figure of 2,660 Iraqis killed during the month of September alone is to be trusted. Nearly 3,000 US troops have been killed since the beginning of the invasion and eight-fold more injured. Iraq has become the US's second Vietnam and there is no solution in sight unless the neo-cons in the White House declare victory and scamper off to safety. This may be seriously considered after the Republicans read the consequences of the Bush administration's policies in the results of congressional elections due in November. The US legacy in Iraq will be a hotbed of fratricidal war, an in-gathering of contagious insurgency and terrorism and a model of deconstructive chaos, to rephrase Condoleezza Rice's Kissinger-style myopic vision of the region. Iraq should be entitled to substantial war reparations from the US. Iran and North Korea's programmes of building their own nuclear capabilities, even for seemingly different purposes, have shown other nations how selective and unworkable the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is. It is a safety net full of holes. Iraq was invaded, occupied and destroyed with no trace of weapons of mass destruction found to justify this grave breach of international law. By contrast, Israel, which has an estimated stockpile of more than 200 nuclear weapons, is untouchable because it has not signed the NPT. India and Pakistan are proud possessors of nuclear weapons and of means to deliver them to heaven knows whom. It is by faulted logic that if a country is not a signatory to the NPT, it is free to intimidate and dominate its neighbours by the implicit threat of the possession of nuclear weapons. Israel's failed state neighbours made the mistake of signing the NPT in the first place. Impotent as these countries are to stop Israel's liquidation of the Palestinian people and annexation of their territory, the Palestinians are left with little more than the radical policy of armed resistance to defend themselves and liberate their homeland. The conquest of Iraq in 2003 and the bombing campaign against the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999 were undertaken without the authorisation of the UN Security Council, which alone is responsible for the maintenance of international peace and security. The phenomenon of international lawlessness triggered by the world's superpower was partly made possible by the collapse of the former Soviet Union and the manipulating influence of the neo-cons in Washington. As a result, global fragmentation and civil wars became rampant. Several republics of the former Soviet Union are experiencing internal tensions, separatist movements and the threat of disintegration. Azerbaijan is threatening to use force to recapture the region of Nagorno- Karabach from Armenia, Abkhazia and south Ossetia regions have declared independence from Georgia, Moldova's separatist Transdinestra movement is appealing to other members of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) to recognise its independent status and Russia is hopelessly fighting its backyard war in Chechnya. The separatist Tamil Tigers continue to battle the government of Sri Lanka, with rising casualties on both sides. In Iraq, the Kurds are gradually pushing their separatist claims towards statehood and, assisted by Israel, have mobilised the necessary military means to defend it. With every ethnic claim comes a nationalist-cum-terrorist liberation movement, so much so that the borderlines have been blurred. No one can safely predict where this "constructive chaos" will lead. In the Cold War years, the world's two super-powers, the US and the former Soviet Union, moved from confrontation to containment to peaceful co-existence. National Liberation movements had a recognisable legitimacy even when they crossed the line into terrorist territory by hijacking civilian aircraft to extract political concessions. The US, too, had its CIA-led death squads that hunted down revolutionaries in South America. It was a nationalist political struggle where the battle- lines were defined and external backers of local forces adhered to certain rules, checks and balances. For a brief period in the early 1990s the world felt like a safe place to live in. Today, the failure of nationalism as a liberating factor and the unholy alliance between the world's sole superpower and Third World dictatorships have turned the international scene into a free-for-all. Adherents of orthodox Islam have found in it inspiration for renewal and a panacea for all the ills visited upon them by pseudo-dictatorial nationalism, socialist dogma and the negative effects of globalisation. Therefore, national liberation struggles have been tinged with a radical religious hue. For hundreds of millions, religious radicalism has become the only liberating factor and refuge that has paled liberal democracy. That may explain the rising global tendency toward radical confrontation, the consequences of which are yet to unravel. * The writer is former Al-Ahram corespondent in Washington DC. He also served as director of United Nations Radio and Television in New York.
